Sacramento District Two Candidates Differ in Cures for Economy

Sacramento’s District Two is one of the poorest areas of the city. The two men running for the open City Council seat want business to return. Their definitions of a service and who provides it are the foundations of their revitalization plans.

Earlier this year, volunteers for a local non-profit spent a
morning at a warehouse stacking boxes of toilet paper for pickup by
smaller non-profits. If the non-profits don't have to buy
toilet paper, they can use that money in other ways to help people
in need.

Michael Daft is one of the volunteers. He says non-profits
have been able to fill some of the void the City budget cuts
have created. But, the struggles of communities like North
Sacramento are still evident, "I see a lot more of the
commercial real estate projects around town. They've all been
halted. They just stopped halfway through construction.
So, you see a lot of empty lots with a house started on it that's
kind of just sitting there."

Businesses have been slowly leaving for decades.

Allen Wayne Warren is running for the District
Two seat. He's a local developer and a North Sacramento
native. His campaign headquarters are on Del Paso
Boulevard. The building is blue with grass thatch trim.
It has seen better days. There's a musty smell inside.
There's no number on the building and the parking lot has a large
pot hole. The side streets are full of boarded-up buildings,
security fencing, and litter.

Warren says District Two needs grocery stores, movie
theaters, bowling alleys, and skating rinks, "We need to understand
that having those services here helps to generate revenue and tax
base here for people who live in this community."

Warren wants the whole community involved in
revitalization. He'd like to see successful former residents
return. He wants police officers to move in to the
neighborhoods they serve. And he says the City can help by
making it easier for entrepreneurs, "For instance, high cost of
applications for starting a business, you know, permits and fees
-the length of time to open the doors. You've heard this
saying before, 'Time is money.'"

Crumbling infrastructure also costs money. Just down
the street from Warren's headquarters, there's a water main that
broke -not once, but twice last year.

Rob Kerth is also running for the council seat. He saw the
damage, "It's like having a river open up. I mean, it flooded
three blocks a foot-and-a-half deep by the time they finally got
the water shut off. And so Carol's Books is now out of
business."

More than a dozen damage claims were filed against the
City. One of those filing was Warren, who owns the building
that housed Carol's Books. He says the flooding caused
$100,000 in damage.

Rob Kerth says City services need to be improved to keep
businesses from leaving and to attract new ones. And, he
wants to set minimum staffing standards for fire and police and
maintenance requirements for the public works department, "Whether
it's streets that are poorly kept that cause people to want to shop
other places, whether it's large piles of leaves that never seem to
get picked up because there's some reason why they're not sort of
on the schedule that month, that convinces people to either move or
not open a business or to not create a local economic
development. City services matter."

Kerth also wants to see the City shy away from big splashy
developments and pay more attention to smaller rejuvenation
projects. He also would change some city policies, "We have a
number of very old buildings in the district that still have a
useful purpose, but not under the rules and regulations that the
City now applies to the buildings. So, what you end up with
is when a building goes vacant, it stays vacant."

As Michael Daft stacks the last boxes of toilet paper,
he says whoever's elected needs to have an economic development
plan ready to go, "We can't wait an extra two years, or even
an extra year or even an extra month. We need to have something
done now."

As testament to that, a forklift moves the last pallet of boxes
out of the warehouse. There's only so much toilet paper to go
around.